


(Duo)Lingo

by MayGlenn



Series: May's February Ficlet Challenge 2021 [26]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Card Games, Established Relationship, Games, Gen, Language Barrier, Languages and Linguistics, M/M, Nebulous Well-Adjusted Future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:34:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29773476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayGlenn/pseuds/MayGlenn
Summary: Nile learned Italian from listening to Joe and Nicky play games.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova
Series: May's February Ficlet Challenge 2021 [26]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2141298
Comments: 2
Kudos: 53
Collections: February Ficlet Challenge 2021: Apocalypse No





	(Duo)Lingo

Nile learned Italian from listening to Joe and Nicky play games. 

The pair of them loved games, and Nile’s favorite thing was to use her millennial knowledge and the board game renaissance to order games for them online. The “Legacy” versions of games such as _Pandemic_ and _Betrayal at House on the Hill_ went off hugely well with them: Joe was delighted by ones that had stickers and cards you had to destroy if the game went a certain way, Nicky was thrilled by changing a game permanently and getting a different outcome than anyone else who played it, and the fact that they couldn’t always travel with their games to new locations meant they could treat theme as single-use items that hurt less to leave behind (since once played through they were now “standard” versions of the game that could be found anywhere).

They were no longer allowed to play chess when Nile was around because she couldn’t stand it when her dads were fighting, and they got into some of their ugliest fights over chess of all things. 

But the easiest thing for them to have around and the best games for them to play were ones that involved ordinary playing cards. They especially liked War, because it was simple, could be set down and come back to easily, and it allowed them to talk. 

The two men spoke English when Nile was around out of politeness, but as the game got going and their worlds started to narrow to each other, they defaulted to Italian. Though it was a second language to Joe, he had at least grown up around it, as had Booker. Andy had been around when Latin was still figuring out how best to vulgarize itself _into_ Italian. 

“They stifle me by doing this,” Nicky once confided in Nile. “Their Italian is better than my Greek, Arabic, French, and English combined. I don’t have a chance to get better if it’s just easier this way.” 

“I mean, you’re not exactly struggling,” Nile pointed out. “Your Farsi is better than my Dari, and I was in Afghanistan for a year.” 

“Oh, a year.” Nicky waved a hand. “Eight hundred years with Yusuf and I can barely communicate with him in his mother tongue. He’s forgotten most of it himself.” 

Nile thought about this conversation as the two men played their card game. Nile was reminded of watching the old Cuban dudes in Florida playing chess or checkers, except that these were old men in young bodies. They bickered. They talked about food. They talked about events both of them half-remembered that might have been last week or three hundred years ago. They talked about beautiful men they had met (and beautiful women—which surprised Nile a bit the first few times it happened). They talked about movies and TV shows and theater and literature with a perspective that astounded Nile, even if they got half the details mixed up. 

All Nile could think about was how much they had learned, and how much they had forgotten, too. 

So when they inevitably switched back to Italian, with Joe correcting Nicky, who, from what Nile could make out, was getting _The Avengers_ black-and-white TV series from the 1960s mixed up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe _Avengers_ film franchise—again—Nile pulled up her Duolingo app and took the opportunity to practice her Italian.

**Author's Note:**

> Twenty-seventh in the February Ficlet Challenge of 2021. The prompt was "war."


End file.
